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31 March 2012

Growing older

This past Monday I celebrated my 34th birthday, which led me to wonder why we speak of "birthdays" and "wedding/ordination anniversaries." Why don't we speak instead of "birth anniversaries" or "weddingdays" or "ordinationdays"? I don't have an answer for this question.

At any rate, among the many greetings I received for my birthday - for which I am deeply grateful - came these words from a brother-priest that he borrowed from William Shakespeare:

Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your mind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity?

Some days it certainly does feel that every part about me is indeed blasted with antiquity, but not today (probably because I slept for more than 10 hours last night, which was nice). I'm not quite there yet, but it won't be long until I am..

2 comments:

It might be a language thing. In Spanish, it's not birthday, nothing about birth or days at all: it's "cumpleanos," finishing a year. "Anniversary" also has the root "year" in it, though I'm not sure of the rest; I think that comes from French. I wonder what it is in other languages!